The Starboard Sea: A Novel

by Amber Dermont

  I had my own superstitions. While Race wore thin leather gloves, I preferred to work the ropes with my bare hands. When I sailed, I needed to feel the ropes tight against my skin. I paid for this with blood blisters, wet, wrinkled fingers and palms. During the entire sailing season, my hands never dried. They stayed rubbery, saturated. No matter how much I warmed them, I couldn’t get the salt water out of my skin, not without pulling off layers of wet calluses. I was convinced that my reaction time was faster, my raw peeling hands giving me a competitive edge. I used my blistered hands as an excuse not to touch Nadia.

  Toward the end of spring training, Coach Tripp invited Race and me over to his apartment for pizza and a final strategy session. The most important thing for a skipper and crew was communication. Coach Tripp insisted that Race and I go for morning and afternoon runs together. He wanted us to keep each other company at mealtime and bond by watching Monty Python films. “Dinsdale,” Race and I would call out to each other whenever our paths crossed on campus. Coach Tripp wanted us to be the Piranha Brothers. “It’s a kind of courtship,” Coach Tripp said, and when Race and I both scoffed at the idea of courtship, Coach explained that we needed to trust each other but we also needed to like each other. “Develop a sense of humor together. Have your own private jokes and soon you’ll anticipate each other’s every move. Finish each other’s sentences.”

  After dinner, I invited Race to hang out in my room. I didn’t see him around the dorm much. Like most day students, he had a complex about not really being part of the school. “Nice single,” he told me. “I should invite you over to my house.”

  “Yeah. I guess I missed my chance to see it last fall.”

  Race picked up The Motion of Light in Water. I’d been reading it over break. Based on the title, I’d assumed the book was about sailing, but it turned out to be a memoir. The author, Chip Delany, was a science fiction writer and the book was his story of growing up in Harlem and being part of the ’60s scene in Greenwich Village. Delany had met everyone from Bob Dylan to Albert Einstein, and he’d also managed to have a lot of sex. Revolutionary sex with woman and men. Delany was gay, but he’d married a woman and had a child. The book wasn’t at all what I’d expected and I wasn’t sure what to say about it to Chester. Race asked me about the book and I told him that Chester had lent it to me.

  “I’m impressed he came back to school,” Race said. “That guy’s got heart.”

  I nodded. “He’s had a tough time here.”

  “You’ve got to admire a kid who just keeps his head down and takes his licks.”

  I doubted that taking his licks was something Chester wanted to be known or admired for.

  I said, “Chester’s stronger than all of us combined.”

  Race looked at me and nodded. “Maybe. I heard Kriffo tried to turn him into a human ashtray. Pretty shitty thing to do.”

  Race picked up the copy of Sailing Alone Around the World that Aidan had stolen for me and began to flip through the pages. “Can I borrow this?” he asked.

  I didn’t want to give it to him. My heart literally hurt at the thought of it. The book wasn’t even mine to lend. By all accounts I should have returned it to the library, but Aidan had given it to me. “You’ve never read it?” I asked.

  Race explained that he’d always meant to and that his father had named one of their sloops Spray, after Slocum’s own boat. Race picked up the book and said, “I think I could do it. Sail around the world by myself. Think I’d actually enjoy it.”

  I told Race that he could borrow the book. “Just remember to give it back sometime, okay?” I knew I’d never see it again. But this was exactly the kind of bonding Coach Tripp had in mind. I needed to play along. Even if it meant losing a little more of Aidan.

  “How tall are you?” Race asked.

  We stood back to back in front of my mirror and were both surprised to discover that we were almost exactly the same height. From the first time we’d met I’d always thought of Race as being taller than me, believed we were incompatible as sailing partners because of this, but the truth was I walked around in a perpetual slouch. Our arms were the same length. I studied Race’s reflection. He wasn’t a badlooking guy. He had clear skin and a muscular build, but he had the pinched face of someone who’d spent his entire childhood throwing tantrums in public places. I hadn’t seen him with any girls. Hadn’t heard him linked to anyone, not even Brizzey. Maybe he was too focused on sailing, or maybe he had an off-campus girlfriend. Race sat down at my desk and I leaned against the windowsill.

  “Do you have a girlfriend?” I asked.

  “Not while I’m training or competing. I don’t want to deal with some girl whining at me about how I’m not spending enough time with her.”

  “You could date someone on the team.” There were two girls on the team, Greta and Emmy, both sophomores, competent sailors who just needed more experience.

  Race ignored me. “I should confess,” said Race, “that I had a little thing with that girlfriend of yours.”

  “Nadia? Brizzey?”

  “No, the other one. The crazy one.” Race leaned back in my chair.

  I focused on the raised chair legs and imagined knocking him over.

  “What did we call her?” he scratched his chin. “Hester. That’s right. Hester would show up at all my parties. Mostly just looking for drugs, but we hooked up. Said she liked me because I’m a redhead.” Race smiled.

  I felt my heart contract, quickening my pulse. “You two dated?”

  Race looked away. “Dated? No, nothing serious like that. We passed her around, you know, for a good time.” He smiled, still unable to look at me. “You didn’t like her?” Race asked. “Not really, right?”

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  “Anyway,” Race said, “thought I should clear the air in case you’d heard anything. Wouldn’t want there to be more bad blood between us. I’m really glad you came around.”

  The whole time Race had been speaking, I’d been digging my nails into the windowsill. I didn’t believe him. Aidan would have told me if she’d been with Race. As far as I knew, she hadn’t been with anyone at Bellingham. I tried to relax, asked Race if he wanted to watch some TV. He said he needed to get home. “Do you ever wish you lived on campus?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “I wouldn’t fit in. I like my freedom, my king- sized bed. I like being able to lock my door.”

  Once everyone returned from break at the end of March, I stayed focused on sailing and completing my course work. My grades still mattered if I hoped to get in to Princeton. I had the second half of Mr. Guy’s Modern U.S. History, along with another semester of calculus and English lit, but my other classes were all electives, classic senior slump fluff. Geology: Rocks for Jocks and something called the Great American Songbook, a class that consisted of listening to the chorus director’s collection of vintage forty-fives and occasionally singing along to protest songs.

  Race and I traveled to meets and regattas sometimes twice a week. I always liked the way the word “regatta” sounded. An old Venetian word. Cal had looked it up once in a mammoth dictionary. “Regatta” originally meant “to compete,” but because Venice was such an empire, a city of water and gondola races, the phrase took on other connotations: “to catch” and “to haggle.” But my favorite of all the alternate definitions was “to contend for mastery.” I knew from Roland that “yacht” was the Dutch word for “hunt.” When the two terms combined, I felt a special drive, a quest—the hunt for mastery. For most people, regattas and yachts didn’t evoke much more than fancy boats and rich people, but I loved that idea of being the best.

  The rules for any regatta read like they were drawn up by a team of idiot lawyers. It was easier to get disqualified than to understand the rules. This too was a source of great plea sure for me and for Cal. On the day of a regatta, no one from either team was allowed on the water or to view the course before the race began. This referred not only to team members and coaches but als
o family members. Cal’s dad once got caught sculling on Lake Kensington before a big meet, thereby disqualifying our boat. Sailing—the sport of sticklers. Race was also a stickler for rules and was especially gifted at pointing out when our competitors faulted. Cal was the same way. He was the one who’d turned in his father for cheating.

  It was hard for me to admit that I enjoyed sailing with Race. But when the two of us were side by side riding the waves, searching for smart winds, when he called out for us to tack or heave to, I was happy to follow his lead. Like any good skipper, he knew when we needed to reduce sail and when we could afford to hoist our spinnaker. Together, we understood our winds, recognized the difference between a header and a lift. On calm days we could turn a line of puffs into enough fuel to bring us first place. When the winds were fluky, we knew when to ease the sails and douse the jib. We still didn’t talk much or laugh at the same things, but the water and air created enough of a language between us.

  When I first saw the schedule of sailing meets, I knew that the toughest competition would come toward the end of the semester, when we traveled to Kensington. I hadn’t been back there and had almost no intention of ever returning. None of my friends or coaches had bothered to stay in touch, and I’d been happy to seal off that part of my life. Coach Tripp had asked me if I would be okay. “I know you have some tough memories there.” If I’d been honest, I would have requested politely to sit out the competition, but I was a member of a larger team, playing a supporting role, and so I asked Coach Tripp if I could address the entire squad, if I could tell the others what I knew from my own experience about sailing on that lake, how best to find the wind.

  Lake Kensington was natural, glacial, and shaped like a lazy four- leaf clover. Half the shore was flat and level, while the other half rose into craggy cliffs that formed a rough canyon like the edge of a broken bowl. Thermals would drop down suddenly off the lip of the gorge. The differences between blue-water sailing and lake sailing are subtle and varied. The terrain around the lake shapes the winds in surprising ways, resulting in sudden gusts. I explained that we would probably find ourselves tacking more than we did out on the ocean. Making almost constant adjustments. Though the waves would be smaller, there would be more of them. A steady rolling chop. The lack of saline would also impact the weight of the wind and the movement of the water. Then there was the question of seiche. Because a lake was bounded on all sides, but still subject to barometric pressure, the water would often rise and pool on one side of the lake only to move rapidly without warning, surging like a runaway tide. “It’s like the way water moves in a bathtub when you stretch back or move your legs.” Lake Kensington was known for these sudden rolling tides, but if you checked the waterlines along the cliffs it was possible to predict a shift. In some ways, it was easier to sail on a lake, but because my team wasn’t used to it, it would be harder for us.

  During the entire drive to Kensington, I sang to myself, remembering all the songs I’d sung for Aidan. To add to my superstitions, I’d strung the key to the library onto a shoelace. I sailed every meet with the key beating against my chest. It wasn’t always easy keeping my ghosts alive. But I tried. Sometimes it was enough for me to simply hold that dried tangerine in my palms, the waning scent still able to remind me of the first night I snuck into Aidan’s room. With Cal, it was both easier and harder to conjure him. Easier in that all I had to do was set off with Race out on our sleek 470. Harder because I sometimes mistook Race for Cal. They didn’t look alike or even sail alike. But they smelled the same, like fresh laundry. It was probably just the matter of their housekeepers using the same detergent, but often enough, when we tacked, as Race crossed over me, I would breath in the air scented with green apples and soap. I’d think Cal was sailing with me.

  I was no longer sure that Race would confess to me. Tazewell had slipped up that one time in Yazid’s room but was otherwise on guard. Taze busied himself playing face-off man for the lacrosse team and scoring with freshmen girls. Kriffo played catcher for the baseball team, still hoping to get into Princeton. One night at dinner, I’d mentioned Aidan’s name to him, trying to draw him out, and he asked, “Who are you talking about?” When I reminded him about the girl who’d drowned, Kriffo said, “She told me I had a sweet voice. What do you think she meant by that?” Stuyvie didn’t seem to trust me like the other guys. We never spent any time alone together. I’d replaced him as Race’s sidekick.

  When we arrived at Lake Kensington, Race and I sat at the end on the dock. His mother had made us both roast beef sandwiches and we ate lunch together while studying the water. The other team hadn’t arrived yet and Race and I enjoyed the quiet. I was ner vous, and I told Race that I was worried about competing against my old team. “I want you to know something,” Race said. “Coach Tripp is a nice guy, but we’re going to win this meet because of you.”

  The wind had blown through Race’s hair and I had to stop myself from flattening his cowlick. “No,” I said, “we’re going to win because we’re a better team.”

  We would be competing both as a team and for our own individual times. The meet consisting of two rounds of racing. After the first round we would return to shore and switch boats with the other team. It was considered poor sportsmanship to leave your challengers with a boat that needed to be bailed out. Race often left me to do the bailing.

  I stood on the molasses-colored beach in my neoprene suit and watched the guys from the Kensington sail team arrive and rig their dinghies, debating whether or not I should go over and say hello. I recognized almost all of them. There was Jake Trotter and his caved-in chest, still terrified of being seen without a shirt. There was Mitchell Field who once challenged Cal to eat as many eggs as Cool Hand Luke. Cal won the contest, then spent two days doubled over, throwing up. Donald Fisher, the guy who had cracked the joke about me getting a 4.0 because of Cal’s suicide, saw me and looked away. He had on the exact same neoprene suit as I did.

  Of all my former teammates, my favorite was Jonathan Porter. He was the kind of guy who would have made a great priest. Or maybe a monk. He had an angelic face and was always off studying how to raise bees or how to feed a village in Ethiopia for a month with just a bag of rice and a box of frozen fish. Jonathan and I sang together in choir. Jonathan, our high tenor, always taking the solo at lessons and carols, soaring through the high notes on “Once in Royal David’s City.”

  These boys were safe, smart, and slightly above average. When I’d traveled among them, I’d taken them for granted. Cal called them “Team Beige.” We were an arrogant pair, but Cal always felt that arrogance backed up with talent was just good self-promotion. I imagined that some of these guys had forgotten about me, but I knew that all of them remembered Cal. My best friend knew how to get people to root for him. When we won together, Cal was the guy they congratulated. Not me.

  The last time Cal and I had gone sailing was on this lake. Not for a regatta, just a regular day of practice. Neither of us knew that it would be the last time we sailed together. We were barely on speaking terms but still sneaking into each other’s beds. The winds that day were pure doldrums. We stalled out in the middle of the lake. Nothing to do but wait and wish for a pair of oars. Cal and I stretched out on the bottom of the boat head to foot, the two of us singing “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” “Sail on silver girl,” Cal and I bellowed. “Sail on by.”

  When we finished singing, Cal draped his arm over my thigh. We continued to bitch about the dead air as he rubbed my leg. Staring up at the sky, I hoped the wind would stay calm. I made a wish that Cal and I could be stranded there forever.

  The Kensington coach gave me a quick salute but didn’t bother to come over and find out how I was managing. He had a meet to prepare for, strategies to discuss, so I tried not to mind. Race approached me and said, “These guys look like a bunch of poofs.”

  “They’re nice guys,” I said. “But they’re no match.”

  The lake had a clay bottom. The water so pristine
and clear I could see the hull of our boat. It was a good swimming lake, and Cal and I had sneaked out any number of evenings and gone skinny dipping. Kids would often dive down, pull out wet clumps of clay, clouding the water. Cal hated when anyone did this. It made him mad to see the purity of the water disrupted.

  While Race and I made our way out onto the middle of the lake, our white sails like some giant’s handkerchiefs, I noticed the sky darkening, the winds picking up. From the shore, sailing must appear to be a maddening series of tacking and jibing, backing and forthing, toing and froing. Though the maneuvers might have seemed arbitrary, the skipper orchestrated everything. “It’s going to be a wild day,” Race promised. I was prepared to work myself to near exhaustion.

  The most exciting parts of any regatta are the timed starts and the close turns around buoys. I’d tried to explain to Aidan how sailors had to tack behind a designated area, jockeying for position, waiting for the signal to advance. “You can’t simply park a row of sailboats in a line and fire a starter pistol.” Cal and I had been masters at crossing the starting line right on cue. Though he was aggressive around buoys, Race was cautious with his starts, always worried about being penalized. When we crossed the imaginary starting line first at Kensington, I knew the regatta was ours to lose.

  The weather on the lake that day was rough, the waves able to break our speed. Race and I knew we’d need to tack when the bow of our dinghy met the top of the smallest wave in a series. Each time the boat began to turn, I released the jib, positioning myself windward, trimming the sails. Race relaxed his body against mine, and though we shouted rallies of orders and agreements in urgent, curt voices, from time to time we’d catch each other’s eyes and smile, as if to say, “Can you believe how lucky we are? Could anything in the world be as much fun?”

  Everything tastes better after a day of sailing. My appetite would surge from all of the energy I’d expended. Sometimes when I sailed, I simply daydreamed about the meal I’d enjoy afterward, hoping to have a chance to reward myself.